Coming Home
by Djap
Summary: Jack Carter x Nathan Stark What the hell had he been thinking? Jack should kick him out of his life for this. Allison sure would have done so...


**COMING HOME**

**AN EUR****e****KA FANFICTION**

**AUTHOR**: Djap

**PAIRING**: Jack Carter x Nathan Stark

**DISCLAIMER:** I don't own the boys and I won't make any money with them. Pity.

**GENRE**: Romance, Established Relationship

**BETA**: Anyone out there who wants to help? I'm no native speaker (I'm from Germany) but I try my best to get better for you.

**RATING**: PG13

**LANGUAGE**: English

**SO TAKE A GLASS OF WINE, LIE BACK AND ENJOY**

**YOURS DJAP**

Coming Home

a Djap story

Nathan Stark heard the hiss of the bunker's door right before complete darkness closed in on him. He was really bone tired, practically dead on his feet, but he couldn't let himself fall to sleep yet. He was nowhere near his destination yet, so he cursed his own desires for the umpteenth time that night.

What the hell had he been thinking?

Probably not much, having worked on that damn equation for about 48 hours straight through, before solving it finally. He was nothing but tired and he'd done the first thing, which had come to his mind: he wanted nothing else but to curl up to his lover's sleeping form and just sleep for the next week or at least until the next disastrous experiment, which would without doubt, try to destroy his only home, Eureka.

But he should have known better. This was insane.

Nathan considered only briefly falling asleep on the couch in the living room, but he couldn't bring himself to actually go through with it. He also would probably pass out from exhaustion on his steering wheel, when he tried to reach his own apartment. As stupid as this whole thing was, he was too near to his final destination to give up.

Damn his stupid stubbornness.

So he turned and blindly groped his way through the bunker, knowing his way well enough since he'd been practically living here for the past six months. Actually he had not only half his wardrobe over here, but S.A.R.A.H had even started her 'When are you going to be home Dr. Stark?' calls to his cell phone a month ago.

He hadn't officially moved in yet, though. Somehow he just couldn't bring himself to take this next step. Okay, his relationship with Jack was working out just fine, surprisingly so, but the years had made him wary of taking too many risks in a relationship. His divorce with Allison had somehow damaged him in a way he couldn't fix all by himself. On the good side, Carter was damaged too by his own divorce, so Nathan didn't feel too bad about it.

At least not until moments like these.

Moving in still had been an issue over the last month, although Jack never pushed it. Instead he let Nathan have his way and shrugged it off. That was probably the most surprising thing about it all: Allison never gave in so easily. And Carter hadn't made the impression he would be the one to let him have his way either.

But in the end, he was. Strangely.

After having mastered the stairs step by step, Nathan finally reached Jacks bedroom and opened the door. His lover was snoring away in peace, so Nathan hurried to get his clothes off. Everything would have been fine, if not for his damn shoes. They just weren't cooperating in the dark and as he bent down to take them off, he overbalanced and crashed down on his bedside drawer.

"Ouch! Shit!"

The snoring stopped abruptly and the slowly waking figure on the bed started shifting:

"Is that you, Nathan?" Jack's voice sounded muffled, as if he was biting his pillow.

"Go back to sleep." Nathan whispered surprised at he annoyed he sounded.

"Are you hurt?" Jack sounded genuinely concerned, which managed to piss Nathan off even more. So he finally snapped louder "I'm fine!" and tried to get his footing back. He pulled himself on the bed and started taking his shoes off.

"Really?" Although he couldn't see it he knew his lover was blinking stupidly in the dark fighting sleep. He never knew why exactly he fell for the other man in the first place. Still right now he was the one who was behaving stupid, not Carter, and should be kicked out of the room and probably out of his very life for it. Allison would sure have done nothing short of it. But Nathan wasn't one to give in easily, so he attacked instead of apologizing.

"Carter!" he bellowed, but got interrupted by a quiet sigh and the wary sounding voice of Jack "You promised not to 'Carter' me inside this room anymore, Nathan."

Nathan rolled his eyes.

"I'm fine, _Sheriff_."

Another sigh, but the expected _Scientist_ didn't reach his ears. Instead Jack murmured:

"S.A.R.A.H. Lights. Dimmed to ten percent."

"As you wish, sheriff."

Nathan's brows still furrowed in pain when the lights came on, but he retained from complaining about it. Guilt was nagging at him as he saw his lover's tired face. The last week had been hard on Jack too while he tried to keep Eureka (and the rest of the world) once again safe from impending doom. He needed his sleep and Nathan had to come and wake him up.

Finally he was able to apologize, feeling very tired.

"I'm sorry I disturbed your sleep. I'll leave and let you sleep."

Nathan looked to the floor while he prepared to leave, berating himself for his stupidity and selfishness.

A hand on his arm stopped him and he was surprised to find his lover smiling gently at him, as soon as he finally dared to look up.

"Rough day, huh?"

Nathan felt again the need to lash out at Jack. He hated to show weakness, but while staring into these amazingly blue ice pools he just couldn't do it. Instead he nodded and sighed heavily.

"Finish dressing then and come to bed!"

"No. I'll go. You need your sleep and I shouldn't have woken you up."

"Nathan, you have countless PD's, even a Nobel prize, so why is it you keep doing and saying stupid things, if it comes down to our relationship?"

Good question. Sadly one he didn't have any answers for – at least none he would acknowledge to himself. He just couldn't get over Allison. She never allowed him to sleep beside her, if he had worked late in the lab. She hated getting woken up in the middle of the night and after the first few times he just gave up trying. He always lost the arguments anyway to her, so he kept himself to the couch. She'd always told him, that she should be more important to him than his work.

Somehow she never understood that she was more important to him. He just was who he was. And without his work, he was nobody anymore.

Nathan tried to find an answer to Jacks question, but he never made it. Instead Jack bridged the remaining gap between their bodies more by crawling and stumbling over the bed than anything more graceful, but somehow that wasn't important either. When Jack's lips descended on Nathan's it still was pure bliss.

Nathan instantly moaned, his hand grabbing Jack's neck to pull him in even more. He felt the answering chuckle against his lips more than he could hear it, but when Nathan used the opportunity to slip his tongue past Jacks lips, his lover answered him with a moan of his own. They stayed like this for some minutes, tongues stroking against each other and relaxing in each others arms until they finally had to break the kiss for some fresh air.

As soon as he got his breath back, Jack grabbed Nathans neck and pulled their heads together leaning his foreheads against each other before declaring:

"Look, I really prefer getting accidently woken up by my lover in the middle of the night when he finally turns in, to waking up all alone although I could have a nice warm body curled around me. Despite what you keep thinking: I. Really. Don't. Care. Nathan. Get this through your thick skull, into your stubborn mind. I know how busy you are. I know how hard the work is you do. I am content with the time you can give me. We'll just have to make the best of the time with each other, if things are this busy, okay?"

Nathan just stared at him speechless before he finally nodded slowly. He wanted to say something, wanted to tell Carter, that there were feelings in him for Jack, he couldn't quite name yet. Instead he settled for finally stripping as he'd been told before.

In the meantime Jack lay back under the covers and watched him with a grin.

"You know, some day in the near future I'll make you strip for me. But sadly I'm too tired to really appreciate the effort right now. Are you free tomorrow?"

Nathan nodded again and turned his head just to see Jack's eyes twinkle with delight.

"Splendid. Me too. S.A.R.A.H?"

"Yes Jack?"

"Skip on the alarm tomorrow. Just wake Zoe for school but let us two sleep in."

"As you wish."

Nathan looked surprised, because his lover was nobody for sleeping in and he wasn't either. He finally finished undressing and slipped just in his boxers under the covers.

"I think I'd like to settle this argument in a more physical way tomorrow morning, when we both aren't imposing death on legs anymore. What do you think?" Jack finally leered and Nathan couldn't help but smirk back:

"I think that was the brightest idea you had all this week, Jack."

"Good." Jack lifted up on his elbows to steal another short but chaste kiss. "Now sleep, Scientist. You look really awful."

"And here I thought you wanted me just for my looks, Sheriff…"

They settled back into bed grinning like the idiots they both were, with Nathan on his back and Jack lying on top of Nathan's chest, his head nestled under the scientist's chin.

"Good night, Scientist."

"Good night, Sheriff."

Nathan waited until he heard Jack's snoring, which never failed to lull him to sleep. But right before he drifted off, he thought about the three little words he still couldn't say to Jack. He didn't even acknowledge to his own mind that he was thinking about saying them to Jack when he was fully awake. It was still way too early in their relationship for those and probably it would never be late enough to say them, until it was finally too late.

But he probably could give Jack something else: The next day he'd put an announcement in the Eureka paper to finally sell his apartment. He would move to the bunker as quickly as he could.

Finally, after everything he had been through with Allison, Nathan Stark had found his home.

**Endless End**

**Finished 28****th**** April 2010**


End file.
